As I Rode by Granard Moat

by Benedict Kiely

  THE GREEN FLOWERY BANKS

  Thrice happy and blessed were the days of my childhood,

  And happy the hours we wandered from school

  By old Mountjoy’s forest, our dear native wildwood,

  On the green flowery banks of the serpentine Strule.

  No more will we see the gay silver trout playing,

  Or the herd of wild deer through the forest be straying,

  Or the nymph and gay swain on the flowery bank straying,

  Or hear the loud guns of the sportsmen of Strule.

  It is down then by Derry our dear boys are sailing,

  Their passions with frantics they scarcely could rule.

  Their tongues and their speeches were suddenly failing

  While floods of salt tears swelled the waters of Strule.

  No more will the fair one of each shady bower

  Hail her dear boy of that once happy hour,

  Or present him again with a garland of flowers

  That they of times selected and wove by the Strule.

  Their names on the trees of the rising plantation,

  Their memories we’ll cherish and affection ne’er cool,

  For where are the heroes of high or low station

  That could be compared with the brave boys of Strule.

  But this fatal ship to her cold bosom folds them,

  Wherever she goes our fond hearts shall adore them,

  Our prayers and good wishes shall still be before them

  That their names be recorded and sung to the Strule.

  Here’s to Patrick McKenna, that renowned bold hero,

  His courage proud Derry in vain tried to cool.

  There’s Wilkinson and Nugent to crown him with glory

  With laurels of woodbine they wove by the Strule.

  But now those brave heroes are passed all their dangers,

  On America’s shores they won’t be long strangers,

  And they’ll send back their love to famed Blessington’s Rangers,

  Their comrades and friends and the fair maids of Strule.

  In the part of Omagh town where I grew up there was born, and lived for a while, a man by the name of Francis Carlin. He wrote some poems, then went off to the USA, where that hard world was not overkind to him. He was contacted, or unearthed, in New York City by the poet Padraic Colum and his wife, Mary, who found him a job in Macy’s department store: an odd place, perhaps, for a poet who, downriver from Omagh at Douglas Bridge, had seen a vision of the last of the Rapparees. Carlin died in 1945.

  THE BALLAD OF DOUGLAS BRIDGE

  By Douglas Bridge I met a man

  Who lived adjacent to Strabane,

  Before the English hung him high

  For riding with O’Hanlon.

  The eyes of him were just as fresh

  As when they burned within the flesh;

  And his boot-legs were wide apart

  From riding with O’Hanlon.

  ‘God save you, Sir,’ I said with fear,

  ‘You seem to be a stranger here.’

  ‘Not I,’ said he, ‘nor any man

  Who rode with Count O’Hanlon.’

  ‘I know each glen from North Tyrone

  To Monaghan. I have been known

  By every clan and parish since

  I rode with Count O’Hanlon.’

  ‘Before that time,’ said he to me,

  ‘My fathers owned the land you see;

  But now they’re out among the moors

  A-riding with O’Hanlon.’

  ‘Before that time,’ said he with pride,

  ‘My fathers rode where now they ride

  As Rapparees, before the time

  Of trouble and O’Hanlon.’

  ‘Good night to you, and God be with

  The tellers of the tale and myth,

  For they are of the spirit-stiff

  That rode with Count O’Hanlon.’

  ‘Good night to you,’ said I, ‘and God

  Be with the chargers, fairy-shod,

  That bear the Ulster heroes forth

  To ride with Count O’Hanlon.’

  By Douglas Bridge we parted, but

  The Gap o’ Dreams is never shut,

  To one whose saddled soul to-night

  Rides out with Count O’Hanlon.

  A great friend in my home town was Captain William Maddin Scott, head of a notable family and, as owner of Scott’s Mills, a good and fair employer. Captain Scott had prepared an anthology, A Hundred Years A-Milling, relating his family to the town and the Tyrone countryside, which they had honoured and aided for so long by their presence. When Seán MacRéamoinn and myself featured the book on a Radio Éireann programme called (how hopefully!) ‘The Nine Counties of Ulster’, the Captain was mightily pleased and I was elevated to being a dinner-guest at the Scott mansion at Lisnamallard, where I was introduced to the Rev. Marshall of Sixmilecross.

  Marshall was a most gracious and learned gentleman, and a prime authority on Ulster folk-dialect. When the Captain told me that ‘our friend Marshall’ was ‘a Doctor of Divinity’ we both laughed merrily. Now there was no reason why Marshall of Sixmilecross should not be a Doctor of Divinity, or a doctor of anything and everything; what set us laughing was that the learned doctor had also written in his Tyrone Ballads (The Quota Press, Belfast 1951) of the sad plight of the man in Drumlister:

  ME AN’ ME DA

  I’m livin’ in Drumlister,

  An’ I’m gettin’ very oul’

  I have to wear an Indian bag

  To save me from the coul’.

  The deil a man in this townlan’

  Wos claner raired nor me,

  But I’m livin’ in Drumlister

  In clabber to the knee.

  Me da lived up in Carmin,

  An’ kep’ a sarvint boy;

  His second wife was very sharp,

  He birried her with joy:

  Now she was thin, her name was Flynn,

  She come from Cullentra,

  An’ if me shirt’s a clatty shirt

  The man to blame’s me da.

  Consarnin’ weemin’ sure it was

  A constant word of his,

  ‘Keep far away from them that’s thin,

  Their temper’s aisy riz.’

  Well, I knew two I thought wud do,

  But still I had me fears,

  So I kiffled back and forrit

  Between the two, for years.

  Wee Margit had no fortune

  But two rosy cheeks wud plaze;

  The farm of lan’ wos Bridget’s,

  But she tuk the pock disayse:

  An’ Margit she wos very wee,

  An’ Bridget she was stout,

  But her face wos like a gaol dure

  With the bowlts pulled out.

  I’ll tell no lie on Margit,

  She thought the worl’ of me;

  I’ll tell the truth, me heart wud lep

  The sight of her to see.

  But I was slow, ye surely know,

  The raison of it now,

  If I left her home from Carmin

  Me da wud rise a row.

  So I swithered back an’ forrit

  Till Margit got a man;

  A fella come from Mullaslin

  An’ left me jist the wan.

  I mind the day she went away,

  I hid one strucken hour,

  An’ cursed the wasp from Cullentra

  That made me da so sour.

  But cryin’ cures no trouble,

  To Bridget I went back,

  An’ faced her for it that night week

  Beside her own thurf-stack.

  I axed her there, an’ spoke her fair,

  The handy wife she’d make me.

  I talked about the lan’ that joined

  – Begob, she wudn’t take me!

  So I’m livin’ in Drumlister,

  An’ I’m gettin’ very oul’.

  I creep to Carmin wan
st a month

  To thry an’ make me sowl:

  The deil a man in this townlan’

  Wos claner raired nor me,

  An’ I’m dyin’ in Drumlister

  In clabber to the knee.

  From that same time in the past dates a friendship with a priest, Father Paul McKenna, who brought me one day to the old rectory in the village of Mountfield, where the aged poet Alice Milligan then lived in a dusty grandeur recalling the home of Miss Haversham in Great Expectations. But the garden where she played in her girlhood could still be seen at the end of Omagh town where one road divides to make three: at a place called the Swinging Bars, where there once may have been a toll-gate.

  WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL

  When I was a little girl,

  In a garden playing,

  A thing was often said

  To chide us, delaying:

  When after sunny hours,

  At twilight’s falling,

  Down through the garden’s walks

  Came our old nurse calling –

  ‘Come in! for it’s growing late,

  And the grass will wet ye!

  Come in! or when it’s dark

  The Fenians will get ye.’

  Then, at this dreadful news,

  All helter-skelter,

  The panic-struck little flock

  Ran home for shelter.

  And round the nursery fire

  Sat still to listen,

  Fifty bare toes on the hearth,

  Ten eyes a-glisten.

  To hear of a night in March,

  And loyal folk waiting,

  To see a great army of men

  Come devastating –

  An Army of Papists grim,

  With a green flag o’er them,

  Red-coats and black police

  Flying before them.

  But God (who our nurse declared

  Guards British dominions)

  Sent down a fall of snow

  And scattered the Fenians.

  ‘But somewhere they’re lurking yet,

  Maybe they’re near us,’

  Four little hearts pit-a-pat

  Thought ‘Can they hear us?’

  Then the wind-shaken pane

  Sounded like drumming;

  ‘Oh!’ they cried, ‘tuck us in,

  The Fenians are coming!’

  Four little pairs of hands

  In the cots where she led those,

  Over their frightened heads

  Pulled up the bedclothes.

  But one little rebel there,

  Watching all with laughter,

  Thought ‘When the Fenians come

  I’ll rise and go after.’

  Wished she had been a boy

  And a good deal older –

  Able to walk for miles

  With a gun on her shoulder.

  Able to lift aloft

  The Green Flag o’er them

  (Red-coats and black police

  Flying before them);

  And, as she dropped asleep,

  Was wondering whether

  God, if they prayed to Him,

  Would give fine weather.

  There was a time when, without offence and in mixed (sectarian, not sexual) company, it was possible to sing ‘The Sash My Father Wore’. This may no longer be advisable. But the magic flute may, because of its very intractability, retain a heavenly neutrality. Scholars and flautists will know that there are variant renderings.

  THE OULD ORANGE FLUTE

  In the County Tyrone, near the town of Dungannon,

  Where many’s the ruction myself had a han’ in,

  Bob Williamson lived, a weaver by trade,

  And we all of us thought him a stout Orange blade.

  On the Twelfth of July, as it yearly did come,

  Bob played on the flute to the sound of the drum:

  You may talk of your harp, the piano or lute,

  But there’s none could compare with the ould Orange flute.

  But this sinful deceiver he took us all in

  And married a Papish called Brigid McGinn,

  Turned Papish himself and forsook the ould cause

  That gave us our freedom, religion and laws.

  Now the boys of the place made some comment upon it,

  And Bob had to fly to the province of Connacht:

  He flew with his wife and his fixtures to boot,

  And along with the rest went the ould Orange flute.

  At the chapel on Sundays to atone for his past deeds

  He said Paters and Aves on his knees and his brown beads,

  And after a while at the priest’s own desire

  He took the ould flute for to play in the choir.

  He took the ould flute for to play at the Mass,

  But the instrument shivered and sighed ‘Oh Alas!’

  And blow as he would, though he made a great noise,

  The flute would play only the Protestant Boys.

  Bob flustered and fingered and got in a splutter

  And dipped the ould flute in the blessed holy water.

  He thought that the dipping would bring a new sound,

  When he blew it again it played Croppies Lie Down.

  He could whistle his utmost and finger and blow

  To play Papish tunes, but the flute wouldn’t go.

  Kick the Pope, the Boyne Water and Croppies Lie Down,

  And no Papish squeak in it all could be found.

  At the Council of priests that was held the next day

  ‘Twas decided to banish the ould flute away.

  Since they couldn’t knock heresy out of its head,

  They bought Bob a new one to play in its stead.

  So the ould flute was doomed and its fate was pathetic,

  ‘Twas sentenced and burned at the stake as heretic.

  As the flames roared around it they heard a strange noise,

  The ould flute was still playing the Protestant Boys.

  My mother came from the village of Drumquin and numbered among her friends Felix Kearney, who wrote poems, some of them meant to be sung. I had the honour of meeting him in his old age, and in the presence of the man himself I heard Paddy Tunney sing Kearney’s song about ‘The Hills above Drumquin’.

  God bless the Hills of Donegal,

  I’ve heard their praises sung,

  In days long gone beyond recall

  When I was very young.

  Then I would pray to see a day

  Before Life’s course be run

  When I could sing the praises

  Of the Hills above Drumquin.

  I love the Hills of Dooish,

  Be they heather clad or lea,

  The wooded glens of Cooel

  And the Fort on Dun-na-ree.

  The green clad slopes of Kirlish

  When they meet the setting sun

  Descending in its glory on the

  Hills above Drumquin.

  Drumquin, you’re not a city

  But you’re all the world to me.

  Your lot I will not pity

  Should you never greater be.

  For I love you as I knew you

  When from school I used to run

  On my homeward journey through you

  To the Hills above Drumquin.

  I have seen the Scottish Highlands,

  They have beauties wild and grand,

  I have journeyed in the Lowlands

  ’Tis a cold and cheerless land.

  But I always toiled content

  For when each hard day’s work was done

  My heart went back at sunset

  To the Hills above Drumquin.

  When the whins across Drumbarley

  Make the fields a yellow blaze;

  When the heather turns to purple

  On my native Dressog braes;

  When the sandstone rocks of Claramore

  Are glistening in the sun,

  Then Nature’s at her grandest<
br />
  On the hills above Drumquin.

  This world is sad and dreary,

  And the tasks of life are sore.

  My feet are growing weary

  I may never wander more.

  For I want to rest in Langfield

  When the sands of life are run

  In the sheltering shade of Dooish

  And the Hills above Drumquin.

  But it was in the village of Dromore, County Tyrone, that I first heard the poem in praise of ‘Drumquin Creamery’. How many creameries in Ireland, or in the wide world, have been so honoured?

  You farmers and traders of Ireland

  I pray will you listen with ease,

  For they say it’s as true as the Gospel.

  So listen, kind friends, if you please.

  Till I tell you about a new creamery

  That only was opened last June,

  For the good of the parish of Langfield,

  While some of them left it full soon.

  For the good of the parish of Langfield,

  For no other cause was it built,

  To help the poor struggling farmers

  With which Langfield it once had been filled.

  CHORUS

  So here’s to our own local creamery,

  And to the wide world be it known,

  Drumquin it has got the best creamery,

  The best in the County Tyrone.